Student Loan Calculator

Federal Direct Loans default to the Standard Repayment Plan, which is a fixed payment over ten years — 120 equal monthly instalments — and that is what this page models when you leave the term at 10. It takes your current principal balance, a fixed annual rate, and the number of years, then finds the level payment whose discounted stream equals the principal, using the present-value relationship in Regulation Z, 12 CFR Part 1026 Appendix J: M = P x i(1+i)^n / ((1+i)^n - 1), with i the annual rate over 1,200. Terms from 1 to 30 whole years are accepted so you can also project an extended or consolidated schedule, but note what that does not do: this is arithmetic, not an eligibility test. It does not model income-driven plans, subsidies, deferment, forbearance or forgiveness, and the official Federal Student Aid Loan Simulator is the right tool for comparing plans. Enter principal, not your statement total. If unpaid interest has already capitalized, it is part of principal and belongs in the box. Uncapitalized accrued interest does not — this model carries no separate accrued-interest bucket, and adding it overstates both the payment and the total. The reason your servicer will never quite match this page is worth understanding, because it is not a rounding quibble. Direct Loans accrue simple interest by calendar day, using the Federal Student Aid formula of principal x rate / 365 for each day between payments. This projection uses equal monthly units instead, which is what makes a fixed-payment estimate stable. The practical consequence surprises people: a 31-day gap between payments costs more interest than a 28-day gap on the same balance, so paying a few days early genuinely reduces what you owe, while paying late quietly adds days of accrual that get taken out of your principal reduction. The results panel shows the approximate daily interest charge so you can see the size of that lever directly. The extra-principal box is where the interesting arithmetic is. It is applied in the month you pay it, so every later month charges interest on a smaller balance and the saving compounds forward — which is why $100 a month against $30,000 at 6.5% removes far more than $100 per month of avoided payments. The schedule simply ends when the balance reaches zero, so the number of rows is your real payoff date, and the final payment is trimmed to the exact amount outstanding. The catch is administrative rather than mathematical: the CFPB warns that a servicer receiving more than the amount due may put your account into paid-ahead status, advancing your due date instead of reducing principal. That saves nothing. Give written allocation instructions, ask that excess go to the highest-rate loan, and check the following statement to confirm it landed where you asked. A 0% rate is supported by its own branch, since the annuity formula divides by the periodic rate; the payment becomes principal over months and interest is zero. If you are weighing refinancing federal loans into private debt, compare the offer on total cost with the personal loan calculator and check what any origination fee does to the real rate in the APR calculator — remembering that refinancing out of federal loans permanently forfeits income-driven plans and forgiveness.